Worn Out Faces
by theycallmeruthless
Summary: She hears the voice of a dead boy. — HildaHilbert.


Her dress is made of crushed velvet and its thin lining is a cool silk that leaves goosebumps mapped across her thighs. Her hips are too thin and her eyelashes are too thick, so she hides behind a curtain of wavy hair. She looks elegant but feels like a little girl, stumbling in her mother's heels.

She holds the heart of the region between her index finger and thumb. With a wrong flick of the wrist, she could kill them all.

It's too much power for a little girl, she thinks, and laughs and laughs and laughs.

When she's sure she's alone, she'll scream until her voice is hoarse or curl her arms around her body and cry in a crowded room.

She's going crazy.

Her dreams are nightmares that crash together inside her skull. She gets chronic headaches that make her dizzy and her eyes water.

She hears the voice of a dead boy. He coos compliments and whispers the sweet nothings she never got to hear. He was absolutely brilliant and swore that she was too. Still is, he'll assure, and always will be.

Sometimes she'll swear that she'll see him pushing through the crowd on the way from the train station or rounding the corner at a supermarket. She used to run after him but doesn't anymore. Now she continues as she was, stepping slowly towards a forgotten location to do something she doesn't care about anymore.

When she goes to familiar places, it's worse. She swears to anyone that will listen that the last car on the train to Anville Town is haunted. Cheren hears, but his smile is like artificial sugar and she knows he doesn't get it. Bianca will listen with earnest eyes but after she saw her friend biting back sobs with her face buried into the hem of her elbow, she stopped talking about it.

She sleeps with the lights on because she's sick of the way he breathes on the nape of her neck at night. She throws popcorn at movie screens because he's making dumb faces in front of Steven Stone. She laughs into the wind and smiles when he laughs back.

When she stands on the Sky Arrow Bridge she rushes through her last thoughts because she knows that people are looking. She's shaking like a leaf as she kicks off her shoes. Her dress billows around her and she doesn't keep it from exposing her thighs because the only thing she cares about at the moment is whether or not it'll be ruined when she hits the water.

She considers pulling it off and draping it onto the floor but figures that it could be dry cleaned and donated to charity post-mortem. She hopes that it'll stick out the brine because it's special and someone out there deserves it more than she does. She kicks herself for not cutting off her hair while she had the chance - someone out there would be thrilled to have the champion's long locks! It would be a spectacle ('Our Heroine Strikes Again, Donating Ten Year's Worth of Hair to Ten-Year-Old Cancer Patient Rosa Hamel') that she doesn't want. She's not anyone's valiant savior. She didn't do anything.

She can't go back because her resolve might change. She may see a Black balloon and remember that it's his favorite color and that one stupid story that he and Cheren would make such a big deal over every time they went camping. She might remember Bianca's genuine whimpers everytime a sewaddle crawled too vigorously over a leaf, paranoid, and his hearty laugh when Cheren teases her.

She doesn't want to turn back.

She starts to feel bad when he begins to cry. He's calling her by every alias she's ever been given and insisting that she deserves a diamond ring on all ten fingers. He calls her his queen and presses his lips to every joint left uncovered. He begs and tries to reason with her and his voice breaks and falls in all odd places.

When she doesn't change her mind, he holds her hand and just looks at her with swollen, red eyes.

He looks as he did the last time she saw him - bruises painting over much of his body and blood pouring from his cracked lips and nose. He is cold against her.

He's still holding her hand when she jumps.

Her tears are as salty as the water and his blood and everything mingles together.

She leaves behind a heartbroken region and a name that doesn't even sound like hers anymore.

_'Goodbye, White.'_

* * *

_A/N: This was supposed to be a drabble on Hilda and Hilbert dressing up and having a nice dinner or something. I don't know what happened._

_*Note: Her dad gave her the dress and she wore it to her Hall of Fame induction, in this AU Hilbert died when N's castle came crashing down, and Rosa Hamel is indeed the new female protag (donning a lame surname). _

_The tenses are funny and the entire story is ridiculously repetitive, but if you see any other mistakes feel free to point 'em out! There may be a couple of words that need to be capitalized that I missed given that this was all initially written in lowercase. Sorry in advance ;w;_


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